1 question on Huscarle Fleets

[Condottiere]

I don't think an inkling was had about the push pull phenomenon of gravitational manoeuvre drives until Tea Five.

An apparent partial adoption was made with the Primitive and Advanced options in High Guard.

I guess your mileage will vary.

 

[phavoc]

Guerrilla ships in the outer system would, at least for Sol, be at least 100 AU out before normal drives stopped working. Let's assume an enemy jumps 200 AU into the outer system. Since there is nothing out there where is the guerrilla warfare? That label implies hiding and attacking, but it's essentially empty space, thus of no military or strategic value. Therefore there would be no fighting there.

They hide there and force you to garrison the system until they run out of supply and maintenance. Which may take years.

Unless you somehow go out there and catch them. Say by using a jump drive into empty space then chasing them down with an m-drive of some type. You probably can’t catch them anyway because it takes a week to jump, but them being there must be dealt with somehow. And maybe you can catch them, since you might work out where their fuel caches are, and then you have to fight people in deep space.

Edit: Defending deep space jump bridges as well.

Being past 100 AU it would take a ship many days at full speed to reach the inner system. Which, essentially, is no different than jumping into the system and arriving with no warning. So ships stooging around in a systems oort cloud is essentially a useless endeavor. Any data you receive from observing the inner system (and it would be very sparse indeed) is also weeks old. There is absolutely no advantage to doing this using the technology limitations of the Traveller game setting. It's also a waste of resources on the enemy who is doing this, as it ties up ships doing essentially nothing useful. A system will be defended, or not, depending on what is there to be defended.

Also, catching them in the outer system is probably impossible. A ship jumping into the outer regions would first need to refuel from an Oort ice asteroid. And once it has it then has the ability to jump out if an attacker was able to find them. And it's a big IF trying to find a ship in the outer system.

By deep space jump bridges I'm assuming you mean systems with worlds that have water or gas giants present? It takes a lot of ships to guard something, and an attacker coming in force will wipe out most garrison forces. The 'high guard' issue with SDB hiding in the gas giant is stated, but we don't know what that actually means. The inference is that a refueling ship is very vulnerable, thus smaller SDB's have an outsized force projection capability. However nothing in the combat rules indicates why this is, or how to deal with it. Assuming this was the case, an invading fleet could simply dispatch escorts, armed and armored equivalent to an SDB, to search for enemies in the zone designated for refueling. Gas giants are large and it is very difficult economically to fully garrison a gas giant with enough forces to stop an enemy fleet from refuelling. Conceptually it sounds neat, but how it could actually work is even more vague.

 

[Anonymous]

Deep Space jump bridge is a bunch of fuel cans in empty space, perhaps with automated admin post and defences. No star, no gas giants, nothing. Their fuel is tankered in. There are a few marked on the Traveller map and it’s known that the military has secret ones that aren’t marked.

I still think the cost and footprint of a jump drive, and the jump flash on use, makes it advantageous to leave sublight ”stay behind” units.

 

[PsiTraveller]

I am thinking of fuel dumps like the one in SIndal at 0406 in the Core book or 2016 on travellermap, SW of Theev basically. This is a fuel dump in empty space. Can ships use this fuel dump to bridge across the J3 gap from Noricum to Theev, like in the Drinax campaign?
Or what about calibration points in Reft Sector; Chandler Station, Riftspan Statrion, Hope Freeport. All are empty hexes in the middle of nowhere. Is jumping in, finding the fuel dump and then moving on now not possible under the newer rules?

 

[Old School]

Well, the rules haven’t been published yet, but it appears that fuel dumps would be possible, you’d just be moving slower. But without a large gravity well messing up your jump, maybe your jump would be accurate enough that it doesn’t matter.

 

[phavoc]

You guys bring up a good point here. Previous material, even what was just recently published with v2, is now out of synch with the proposed rules.

I wonder if anyone thought of this example, too? Aren't there plans to continue expanding the Sindal sector materials? Not that the fuel dump would necessarily affect anything more than what has been published already.

 

[Condottiere]

It's probably cheaper and easier to have automated drones patrolling deep space, with a tender arriving every now and then to download data and do routine maintenance.